President Xi Jinping yesterday stressed the importance of preventing and controlling major risks through the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

Xi, also the Party’s general secretary, made the remarks while meeting representatives from the public security sector. He said those working in the sector should improve their political awareness and maintain the authority and unified leadership of the Party.

They should be sober-minded about the difficulties and challenges facing them, and deal with major risks, he said.

Xi stressed that better social governance would better solve various social problems. He told the representatives to make social governance more systematic, rational, intelligent and in accordance with rule of law. Social governance should be improved through advanced theory, a scientific attitude, professional methods and appropriate standards.

He demanded better coordination and ability to predict and prevent risks, and improve the precision and efficiency of social governance.

Xi noted that development and stability were the absolute principles, so both should be dealt with by strong hands.

“We should continue with social governance through socialism with Chinese characteristics, and become adept at converting the leadership of the Party and the advantages of our socialist system into advantages of social governance,” he stressed.

Xi asked for more efforts to improve social governance by socialism with Chinese characteristics to ensure that the people lead prosperous lives, society stays in order and the country enjoys long-term peace and stability.

Over the past five years, officials in the sector have come up with new ideas, mechanisms and methods, solving a number of major problems, improving the sense of security and satisfaction of the people, and contributing to a stable environment for reform and development, the president noted.

Surveys show that the public’s sense of security has improved in the past few years with their satisfaction index rising to 91.99 percent in 2016 from 87.55 percent in 2012.

Police nationwide held campaigns against terrorism, telecom fraud, underground banks, personal information infringement and crimes related to guns and drugs, among others.

China has also made use of Internet technology in its social governance.

The Ministry of Public Security has helped find 1,274 missing children with the help of a system called “Tuanyuan,” or reunion, a pop-up platform on which information on 1,317 missing children has been shared since its launch in 2016.